I understand that, and why, certain keywords are ignored in search enquiries.

But "KEYBOARD"???!!!

I just searched to see if a T31 keyboard happened to be for sale, and search politely excluded "keyboard", thus giving me every post that mentioned the T31.

I'd opine that this ain't particularly user-friendly.

Art

I've run into similar exclusions before, when trying to search for something with a very common word in it. Frustrating to be sure.

I have to agree with you. I don't have the power or the knowledge to do anything about it though.

What often works when the forum search engine is wanting is to use Google Advanced Search. Enter in forum.thinkpads.com for the site to search, along with the appropriate keywords or phrase.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q ... nkpads.com

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Same here - I've rummaged around in the admin panel, and there don't appear to be any search settings that can be changed. Well, any search settings period, actually.

wont let me search for topics with "wireless" in the title! it says its too common a word or something, which is strange. Idk what other word to search for lol.

kind of infuriating when your trying to search the database for help on wireless connectivity for your thinkpad!

See GomJabbar's reply here: viewtopic.php?f=22&t=83119

RBS...you linked to the same thread that you posted in....classic

I was about to post about this very issue but had a look & saw I'm not the only one scratching my head.
I searched for x31 wireless, and apparently wireless is too common, (but not x31???) and yes, I did specify the correct forum to search.

I noted the suggestion to use Google search. Perhaps the sites search function should be removed, or changed to a link to Google.
Ah well, one day the internet will be perfect, just not today.

Although I highly recommend the Google search of forum.thinkpads.com instead, there is (as I have posted elsewhere) a workaround to search for the "too common" words like "wireless."

The search here accepts * as a wildcard character, so you could search for "wireles*" and have it work. But consider using the search options to limit the search as much as possible, by a limited number of forums as an example. My search for "wireles*" in just the T4x forum found over 800 hits!

And be as explicit as possible. A search for something as common as say "wire" would be useless in finding useful results and might slow the board to a crawl (slowing the thinkpads.com server is why I suggest a Google search instead).

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q ... om&num=100

The fix.
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=2112386

The common word threshold was already disabled, so I'm rebuilding the search index. Says it could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, so we'll just see how it looks when it's finished.

thanks, Jane!

I wouldn't thank me yet. It's been running for 6 hours so far. I just hope I haven't broken anything.

thanks for making the effort.
i understand all too well what's required in systems management. can't tell you how many times i spent days (and nights) babysitting database update/upgrade jobs. mind-numbing!

By Jove, I think(pad) you've done it!!

I just searched for a wireless keyboard & got no complaints from the search engine.

Glad to hear it!

The search index doesn't seem to be all there yet. A search for 'wifi' on our forum search engine returns 13 results. It returns 12,700 results on an advanced google search of the forum. The other thing is, that search throttle is there for a reason. If the forum performance starts to suffer once this ramps up then we need to put it back on. It's one of those 'you can't have your cake and eat it too' scenarios ... unless StarGehzer wants to pay for a better server and more bandwidth

I've been re-running it today, and after 12 hours, the count for wifi is up to 23. I don't think the index building is working correctly.

On the bright side, one of the settings that is turned on is "Updating of fulltext indexes when posting, overridden if search is disabled." Since search is enabled, I assume that means that the index is constantly being updated as messages are posted.

I'll leave it running overnight and see where it is in the morning.

not that i could do any better but it might be a good idea to let me know when something like this comes up..
so i can at least backup the db.. or start praying..

<quirks brow>

Currently you can not search "X1" because there is a validation that: Each word must consist of at least 3 characters

In that case use the advice previously mentioned in this thread and put Google to work. Enter whatever terms you are looking for and include this:

site:forum.thinkpads.com

and if you want a particular forum...

site:forum.thinkpads.com X1 "f=62"
that search in google current shows 4 of the 7 topics in that forum (upto May 31)

the f=62 in quotes is for the X1 forum... you can find it for whatever subforum by going to it and looking at the address bar.

Also google recognizes the OR keyword... so to search for X1 in X1, general hardware, & Windows 7 forums...

X1 "f=62" OR "f=18" OR "f=57" site:forum.thinkpads.com

So while google won't find newest posts... shouldn't be a big deal cause newer posts are still on the 1st page of each forum, it is a lot more advanced then forum search & saves Bill some bandwidth